This invention relates to the field of web services, and more particularly to the communication of data objects between applications in a web runtime environment such as a web browser.
Providing services over the web such as sharing of contents is becoming widespread as the number of web enabled devices is increasing significantly. Although services available over the web rely mostly on the client/server model where a client web application exchanges data with a web server, increasingly client web applications need to pass data between each other when running on a same client device. This is aimed to enhance the provided service and user experience.
In this context, it is known to have a service requester web application run by a web browser making a service request towards another web application hosted by the same web browser and capable of providing the requested service. For instance, a photo album application may request photos (“pick” service) from another application adapted to provide photos. This model doesn't provide however the necessary flexibility for coping with all the emerging usage scenarios, while maintaining the applications dissociated.
It is therefore sought to improve the way web applications can exchange data while maintaining a loose coupling between them and keeping an open architecture that makes it possible to plug-in applications form different developers.